


all nerves (to serve the sun)

by kettrickens



Category: JackSepticEye (YouTube RPF), Markiplier (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, PAX Prime, Sneaking Around, also some lowkey soulmates vibes if you like, it's not that angsty really, just a lot of Feels i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-04
Packaged: 2018-04-29 20:24:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5141369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kettrickens/pseuds/kettrickens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For three days they’ve been stealing moments like this, and honestly, it’s breaking Jack’s heart a little that tomorrow is the last day of the convention, that all this will be snatched away from him so soon after he finally, finally claimed a sliver of relief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all nerves (to serve the sun)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic managed to break my three-year-long streak of not finishing any of my stories, so Good Job septiplier. Title credit to a line from the poem 'How Soon The Servant Sun' by Dylan Thomas.

“Mark, what the fuck… where are we– Mark!”  
  
Jack’s voice keeps cracking. With exasperation or laughter or both. And Mark keeps dragging him along by the hand with no response but the grin on his face and the gleam in his eye.  
  
“Mark–” he tries again, gets a ‘ _shh!’_ , and figures he’ll cut his losses now. He won’t pretend he isn’t enjoying this, anyway. Mark’s hand is warm — it’s always warm — and Jack does have a fairly good idea of where they’re going. He just likes to maintain some veneer of tact.  
  
His assumption proves correct when Mark steers them around a corner, the buzz of a hundred muddled conversations well behind them, and glances around cautiously to check for any company. He pushes open the nearest door, that impish half-smile curling up fully at the corners upon the confirmation of no occupants, and ushers Jack inside.  
  
The door clinks shut behind them, and Jack has less than three seconds to take in his surroundings (a small break room of some sort — a microwave, a sink, a coffee machine…) before Mark has him crowded against the countertop. There’s a gentle hand at Jack’s waist, another at his neck, fingertips hovering fleetingly over his pulse point before Mark closes the last of the distance between them and kisses Jack’s smiling mouth.  
  
This has been happening a lot.  
  
Jack doesn’t really know how the chance touches, the accidental grazes of skin at that first convention turned into lingering embraces and cheap excuses for prolonged contact, but right now he’s convinced that any other order of events leading to any other conclusion would have been out of place and _wrong_. The months after PAX East back in March had been agonising. Days upon days of his fingers twitching, his skin tingling for a very specific interaction. The urgency had built up in his body like raw static, and by June, he had almost gotten used to the voltaic ache behind his ribs, in his veins, underneath his fingernails.  
  
Indy PopCon wasn’t much better. The whole weekend was a charged wreck of magnetism and barely contained yearning, Jack being sure each time Mark’s hand brushed his arm or amiably patted his back that his skin would spark and ignite. And he knows it sounds like pure fucking melodrama when he recounts it like that, but he’s honestly impressed that those sparks managed to fizzle out between them and stay stagnant for another two months. If he thought that first stretch of absence was bad, the time leading up to PAX Prime was _hellish_.  
  
Now that he’s here, though… Oh. Mark’s weight against him is a beacon. A lifesaver to cling to amidst the detonation of all that pent up craving. And _fuck_ , was it worth it. For three days they’ve been stealing moments like this, and honestly, it’s breaking Jack’s heart a little that tomorrow is the last day of the convention, that all this will be snatched away from him so soon after he finally, finally claimed a sliver of relief. But Mark’s skin is soft. His lips are warm and his arms are steady and _real_ , and he holds Jack like the universe built him solely to do just that.  
  
Time is a prize, and they have no qualms about cheating for it. They’ve learned to double-cross the clock; but Jack still takes all he can. His fists unclench from their death grip on Mark’s shirt, palms sliding up over his sides and clutching at the backs of his shoulders. His fingers grapple there restlessly for a second, before shifting back down to the small of Mark’s back, around to his hips, upwards to his chest. He feels Mark laugh faintly against his mouth when he quests a hand up further to twine reverently in his hair. The dark strands are sleek between Jack’s fingers, and he pulls away from Mark’s seeking lips for a second to gaze, a little hazy-eyed, at the way the locks tangle lightly between his fingertips.  
  
Mark’s eyes are dancing when Jack glances back at his face. “What?” he asks, withdrawing his hand from Mark’s hair and laying it on his shoulder.  
  
“Mmm,” Mark hums, dipping his head forward to bump his lips lazily against the edge of Jack’s mouth. “I should let my hair grow out again.”  
  
Jack grins and opens his mouth to respond, but Mark’s lips are making their way across his cheek and down to his neck, latching onto the spot just beneath the angle of his jawline where his stubble wanes out. So his reply ends up being, “Wow wait _fuck_ not above the collar please _below the collar below the collar..._ ”  
  
Mark’s laugh is a mellow vibration against Jack’s throat, but he does graciously retreat to a less visible space. If only because he knows they have a panel in less than fifteen minutes. For a moment he just noses beneath the neckline of Jack’s shirt, pressing his lips lightly against the dip between his collarbones. Then he languidly moves an inch to the left and sucks a bruise the colour of autumn wine into Jack’s awaiting skin.  
  
The air feels undersaturated. Yet Jack knows in hypersensitive detail every particle of oxygen swarming his body and trying to find purchase in his lungs. His mouth falls open on the word ‘ _Mark’_ , accent thick, voice a little faint.  
  
After a lengthy second, Mark leans back to complacently admire the blemish he’s drawn out on Jack’s collarbone — a bloom of deepening red that’ll outlast the chances he’ll have after tomorrow to put his mouth there again any time soon. He skims his lips just above the spot, pleased, then nestles his face easily against the side of Jack’s neck.  
  
For a moment, Jack thinks Mark is going to give him another hickey to match the first, right there on the side of his neck in plain, undisguisable sight. But he doesn’t. He just stays there with his nose tucked under Jack’s jaw, breath flowing like an even tide from his lips and ghosting damply over Jack’s skin. It makes him shiver, but Mark is warm all over, so Jack melds their bodies together and drinks in the heat.  
  
It’s a heady feeling, standing so close like this, pressed together like a perfect mechanism. It’s precious and addictive once it kicks in, and so easy to want for all eternity.  
  
And it’s exactly why Jack gets so _sad_. There’s a space in his chest that’s become host throughout the day to what feels like a nasty little shard of glass, jabbing at his insides every time he thinks about having to pack up and board a plane. The worst is that he knows how _senseless_ it is to waste time dwelling on those thoughts, yet the feeling still weighs heavy like tar on his heart and snags dully with every inhale.  
  
If he were an onlooker, he’d probably scoff at how absurdly out of proportion the entire thing is. Three times he’s actually met Mark, if you want to get technical about it, and three days ago they quit all the dancing around each other and got as far as kissing.  
  
(Three words Jack has to keep swallowing back, pretending not to be petrified by how naturally they come to him whenever Mark… whenever Mark does anything.)  
  
The build up to this was one long uphill hike, and Jack kind of wants to kick himself for not foreseeing that the terminus was a sheer cliff drop into _oh fucking hell I never want to leave Mark’s arms again._  
  
It isn’t the travelling that gets to him. Although, well — yeah, that does suck, and he’s proven to himself that the distance drives him up the fucking wall when he gets home, when his very bones ache because all he wants to do is touch Mark’s skin. And that right there… that’s the frightening part. It’s frightening how Jack feels like he’s not just here for the conventions, that he’d somehow be roped back across the sea every time he left Mark anyway, regardless of plans or places to be. It’s frightening how his brain starts coming up with all this wild imagery that Mark is some kind of centre of energy, some kind of _sun_ that he gravitates towards.  
  
(He tries not to wonder whether he’s fated to orbit back and forth like this, around and around Mark forever. If he stared a little too long, perhaps Mark would burn and blind him; and perhaps Jack would let him.)  
  
It’s ridiculous, he knows it is, but suddenly he really doesn’t want to leave this room. Maybe if they keep the door closed, the rest of the world will stop, and they’ll just stay here forever with never an inch or an ocean between them again. He tightens his grip around Mark’s body as if he can pre-emptively breach the distance between them come tomorrow and the months following. There’s a lump in his throat.  
  
But then — then Mark is nuzzling against the juncture between his shoulder and neck, his stubble a pleasantly coarse scratch against Jack’s skin. An abrupt anchor to _this_ , to now. So Jack turns his face into Mark’s hair, closes his eyes and just breathes him in.  
  
He knows he’ll ache for this — all of it — knows he’ll miss Mark like a limb and wonder how in hell’s name he ever coped before. But he’s never been one to brood on the inevitable, and tells himself that he should really, really work on not starting now. Carpe diem… and all that. Punch the day in the face.  
  
After all, maybe it’s _them_ , exactly like this now, that’s inevitable.  
  
“Are you smelling me?” Mark asks playfully, his lips buzzing warmly against Jack’s skin and effectively breaking his reverie. Jack tilts his head and drops his face onto Mark’s shoulder, his reply a muffled mixture of ‘ _mmmmm no’_ and ‘ _shut up’_.  
  
Mark is laughing sincerely now, his warm hands coaxing Jack’s face away from his shoulder to plant a kiss on the tip of his nose.  
  
Jack looks up, and Mark’s smile is more blinding than any sun.  
  



End file.
